Cultivating Communities of Practice (edit title)

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Liked It Rated 5 stars “Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder have written an exceptionally clear and honest book. While they obviously are deeply committed to communities of practice and exuberant in embracing the concept – particularly in the realm of knowledge management – they also have observed...” see full review » see other reviews »

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  • Rated 5 stars

  “Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder have written an exceptionally clear and honest book. While they obviously are deeply committed to communities of practice and exuberant in embracing the concept – particularly in the realm of knowledge management – they also have observed enough of these communities to see how they can fail to crystallize, can go bad or can survive but never gain recognition. This gives a distinctly realistic edge to their methodical book. The authors work through the definitions, core components and guiding principles of these communities, and describe how they fit within existing formal structures. They illustrate their claims with numerous examples. getAbstract advocates this solid introduction to communities of practice to two groups of readers: anyone interested in knowledge management and anyone interested in community development, including organizational culture.
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  getAbstract wrote this review Friday, February 27 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No

  
  
  • Rated 4 stars

  “I originally thought this book might be too academic or that the examples from Shell and McKinsey would not be relevant. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that the book contained numerous ideas that I'm using to introduce communities to my IT organization.
  
  The book isn't perfect. It could be shorter. The writing is dry. Some of the observations and recommendations verge on the obvious. But even the chapter on Measuring and Managing Value Creation - one of the more high-level and unhelpful chapters - talked about the use of "systematic anecdotes" to demonstrate value of a community. The examples of story-telling to demonstrate value resonated with me and we're using this approach today.
  
  The bottom line is that the book is very useful. I took many notes, dog-eared a number of pages and I'll be using it as my implementation reference. ”

  John C. Stepper wrote this review Monday, January 12 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No